The AMD Radeon RX 480, packed with numerous new features and has the latest technology is placed on top of another graphics card. (Photo : YouTube/Science Studio)
AMD has released the RX 480 but has disappointed many users with the power draw as it uses too much power which can cause instability issues and FPS drops.
At first, it was thought that the RX 480 power draw problems were just isolated issues. However, most users on Reddit have been reporting the same thing.
Now, AMD has acknowledged the issue and they have admitted that their power tuning for the Polaris card is not optimal. Some of the cards pull around 90W on the PCIe slot which is significantly over the 75W maximum limit.
Users can already "fix" their problems with the card through the Global Wattman settings but it could prove to be a daunting task for the average user. AMD announced that they are already testing a driver that can fix the power draw issue of the RX 480 and they hope to release it soon, Ars Technica has learned.
AMD did not exactly specify what the main root of the problem is. Some users speculate that the company overestimated the card's power draw limit and now they are the ones suffering from the consequences.
In terms of performance, the Radeon RX 480 does provide smooth framerates for 1080p gaming as AMD had promised. It also performs quite well in 1440p but not as well as NVIDIA's GTX 1070 and the GTX 1080.
Users who tried to fix the power draw problem on the card have managed to get a small framerate boost. The fix requires the user adjusting the RX 480's power state from 1100mV to 1050mV using the Global Wattman settings, Legit Reviews reported.
In addition to getting more frames per second, the lower power draw could also have a small positive impact on the heat of the card. The electricity bill would also be a little bit less expensive overall.
Fortunately, the problems are being reported on the reference AMD Radeon RX 480 cards and not the upcoming partner AIB GPUs. However, some are still skeptical as the problems might still persist on the partner cards.
AMD hopefully releases the driver fix for the Radeon RX 480 soon. There is only about a week before the release of the custom partner cards from XFX, Powercolor and others.
